Night had fallen over the bottomless pit, leaving it so dark I could not see an inch ahead.

No, perhaps this was the bottomless pit as it truly was. A forsaken land without a speck of light, a hint of warmth, or a place to set foot.

I took a lamp down to the yard to look over the fool who had willingly entered such a place. To my surprise, a corpse had beaten me there.

“Trainee Tyrkanzyaka? What brings you out here?”

Even in darkness so complete I could not see an inch ahead, the vampire’s parasol remained uniquely dark. The blackness concealing her was less an absence of light than the very concept of darkness condensed.

From within it, the vampire looked at me with glowing red eyes.

“You actually managed to wake up. You seemed rather fond of sleeping through the night.”

“Oh, I can hardly compare to you and your eternal slumber, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Next to three hundred years of uninterrupted sleep, my night’s rest is a firefly flashing for a single evening.”

“That tongue of yours...”

Smiling gently, the vampire looked at me—or, more precisely, at the golem perched on my head.

“What a cute toy. Is it a golem?”

“This is Captain AB, a Military State communications officer. A very shy golem who probably won’t acknowledge you, so please excuse that in advance.”

The golem answered.

『Negative. It is not shyness. Direct contact with trainees is discouraged in my capacity as an observer... In any event, please understand if I remain silent.』

“What? A golem speaking on its own, without an operator...?”

The vampire’s red eyes widened slightly. Then she curled a hand before her mouth and murmured,

“Ahem. It must be some new technology. Such things hardly surprise me anymore.”

A lie. The only golems the vampire knew were controlled with strings. Magical communication was cutting-edge technology to her.

“Ah. Yes. We’ll go with that for now. More importantly, why are you really out here?”

The vampire evaded my question.

“I have no reason to explain my every action to you.”

“Is it because of the person coming down soon?”

“... It is.”

Frowning slightly, the vampire grumbled,

“So you already knew. Well, this is Military State territory, and you said you managed it, did you not? You are practically its lord. Of course you would know.”

“I’m not really anything like a lord. Anyway, did you really come out to greet whoever’s coming down?”

“Yes. Did you not say last time that, should anyone else arrive, Shei or I should handle them from now on?”

“Uh, I just threw that out there without expecting anything. You’re actually going to do it?”

“Indeed. Though I am a being estranged from my own time, I am taking shelter here. It is only proper courtesy to honor your reasonable request.”

With that, the vampire rested her parasol on her shoulder and looked up.

Hmm. As someone from a bygone age, she certainly was sensitive to etiquette. As a guest, she would try to fulfill her obligations.

But was that all?

I read through her thoughts at leisure and grinned.

“That isn’t your only reason, is it?”

“... Do you doubt my word?”

“Doubt? Of course part of you feels that way. That’s why you sensed the presence and came out to greet it. It’s just...”

I had a talent.

Mind reading revealed people’s secrets to me. But if anyone learned I could do it, everyone would be on guard against me. No one would welcome someone who pulled back the curtain on their shame and stared right at it. They might even take the initiative and try to kill me.

So I had cultivated a slightly different ability.

“As you know, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka, you’re a vampire. Your ability to sense blood encompasses all of Tantalus. No, that hardly does it justice—you have the incredible power to control it outright, provided it isn’t inside someone’s body. But conversely, if that blood isn’t flowing outside, you can’t detect it quite so perfectly. Take me, or Trainee Rash, the undying one, for example.”

Namely, presenting what I learned through mind reading as though I had deduced it myself.

That was why I had spent some time working as a detective. All sorts of clients came looking for me, hiring me to expose someone’s dirty secrets.

Though most of the jobs involved dealing with someone’s affair partner. Ahem.

“For you to have detected this intruder already, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka, there are probably two possibilities. Either the falling intruder is bleeding, or...”

The vampire’s expression was composed. But that was merely her way of turning away from the truth about to arrive.

I gave an easy shrug and told her exactly what I had read in her thoughts.

“They’re a vampire whose body moves through the power granted by the Progenitor.”

The being falling toward us was none other than a vampire.

And a vampire had entered this place? It could not be to escape the sunlight. There was plenty of shade to be found in the world these days.

There was only one thing here that could draw a vampire’s blood.

The Progenitor, Tyrkanzyaka. They had undoubtedly come seeking her mighty blood.

‘He would have found out anyway, but I had hoped to delay it a little.’

The vampire sighed softly and spoke.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not prejudiced against vampires either. If I were, would I be this comfortable around you, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka? As long as whoever’s coming down doesn’t try to kill me, I won’t kill them.”

“... It is as though you stepped inside my mind and came back out.”

My smoothly flowing answer brought a warm smile to the vampire’s face.

“Thank you. For understanding.”

“Not at all. There’s a vampire I know, and she’s surprisingly pleasant to live with.”

“You rascal. Such a smooth talker.”

With a brief, clear laugh, the vampire looked up again to await the vampire who must still be falling. A heartwarming ending that had even left her satisfied.

But as with all beautiful stories, what followed was hardship and pain enough to split my head open.

『What gives you the right to decide that on your own?!』

Out of the vampire’s sight, the golem was repeatedly yanking the hair beside my ears. Swallowing the scream rising in my throat, I reached back and pried its arms away.

“You think I’m the one deciding? The Progenitor is.”

『That is the Progenitor. The origin of all vampires, their ruler, and the de facto master of five powers, including the Crimson Duke’s principality! Are you going to let this meeting take place?』

“Well, what do you want me to do? Stop it? With what power?”

『Intervene and persuade the Progenitor!』

“To do what?”

『If you cannot, relay my words exactly. That alone will silence the Progenitor!』

Seriously. If it was that important, they should do it themselves. What did they expect from a mere laborer?

Still grumbling, I started walking.

“Fine. I’ll try to help from the sidelines. But just you try asking me to defeat a vampire. Military State or not, I’ll dunk you straight into the water.”

『Our priority should be resolving this matter successfully. Unlike you, I am actually responsible for this place.』

With the golem hanging onto my head, I sidled over to stand near the vampire. Like her, I looked up and waited for the intruder to fall.

Time dragged on. Whether the fall took a while or some procedure was required, there was still no sign of the intruder who was supposedly arriving soon. The vampire and I simply stood with our necks craned, gazing up like children waiting for a shooting star.

As the silence stretched on, a wistful voice came from beneath the parasol.

“In the distant past, looking up at the sky at night like this was my joy.”

I offered a casual reply.

“That hasn’t changed. Plenty of people still take pleasure in it.”

“Yes. Past or present, the sky must still be beautiful. The starlit night seemed like a river of stars flowing overhead, and I would gaze at it endlessly, losing all track of time. Only at night could I look upon the sky without restriction. Then that seemingly eternal night would end, and the sun god would lift his head from the pillow of Mother Earth’s arm in the distance. I would hide beneath the ground, fleeing the sunlight as it spread blue across the sky.”

Where had that come from?

Faced with a twelve-century-old girl whose sentimentality put a twelve-year-old to shame, I could find nothing to say and simply listened. Fortunately, the vampire was not particularly expecting an answer.

Words spoken in such a wistful mood were meant only to linger in the wind and disappear.

“We wished only to live, yet we could never stand unashamed. We could not hold our heads high and face the light. Even when commanded to come out and submit to a fair judgment, we had to flee if it was to take place in a square at noon. In the end, we survived, but we could never stand proud.”

The origin of vampires, the Queen of Shadows.

Once, she had pitied the dying and raised them up as vampires. Now she pitied the vampires born that way.

And feelings like those...

The guilt an inadequate parent feels toward their children leads from one question to the next.

Why did I bring you into existence?

Was it right to bring you into a world of nothing but suffering?

Was giving you a life of fleeing, being hunted, and hiding a blessing or a curse?

Would it not have been better for both of us if you had never been born?

Good parents feel guilty for having such painful thoughts at all, and that guilt torments them anew. The more they suffer, the greater their guilt grows. Like a fire consuming itself, the emotion swells, dark and murky. In endless pain, they cry out, struggling not to fall into the gulf between what should be right and what actually is.

That was how the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka felt now.

The little god who had brought vampires into existence, only to become steeped in the sin of creation, clutched her pitch-black parasol and suffered.

“... I thought I might feel a little better if I could not see the sky. That was why I came here of my own accord. Yet now that I am here, it is the sky I miss.”

Just then, something glittered in the starless bottomless pit. A signal light, blinking at regular intervals, drew steadily closer. Too artificial to truly evoke a shooting star, that light approached us.

It looked for all the world like something falling from grace.

“How forlorn.”

And the intruder fell to the ground.